Despite heavy rains and standing water on the course last week, Waynesburg University’s men’s cross country team battled PAC competitors and poor weather at the Bethany Invitational.

The team aims to improve upon last season’s finish, where the Yellow Jackets ended the season sixth out of 10 teams at the Presidents’ Athletic Conference championships.

At the Bethany Invitational, despite the poor running conditions, the Yellow Jackets placed ninth out of the 15 schools in competition.

Despite sitting his top six runners from this event to allow the other runners to establish a running time, head coach Chris Hardie found a key strength to this year’s cross country team is depth.

According to Hardie, the Jackets are taking a goal-oriented approach to this season—shooting to finish at least third in the PAC conference championships, which will take place later this season in Waynesburg, Pa.

The team is taking a new approach to competing this year, only running six runners per event to save certain competitor’s legs for the depth of the season so that runners can be stronger when it’s time to compete for PAC Championships, according to Hardie.

“Coming out of [the Bethany meet], we found that we have a lot of depth”, said Hardie. The top three finishing runners for Waynesburg at the invitational included sophomore Kyle Warmbein who finished 40th with a time of 30:29, followed by freshman Silas Mays in 57th with 31:39 and junior Mason Klopp, 59th, with a time of 31:44.

In addition, senior Jacob Pryor placed top 60 with senior Patrick Hager, freshman Josh Hughes and junior Justin Lewis topping off Waynesburg’s scoring seven.

Mays was also a topic of conversation and Pryor spoke highly of the freshman.

“He is a strong runner and he runs smart…he knows how to pace,” Pryor said.

Mays top 40 finish, out of 159 runners on Saturday, held a team-best finish on the day.

The Yellow Jacket team, is older as it features six sophomores, including Matt Durgin, Matt Mansfield and Mac Colomb, who are consistently one of the top runners on the team last season.

According to Pryor, the team ran for hundreds of miles while training. He also cited muddy and standing water as a few obstacles from Saturday’s event that created problems for runners from each team.

“Pack running is good for pacing and was in a sense done in the past on a smaller scale,” said Pryor. “As long as the underclassmen pick up on it we should be good.”

The Yellow Jackets competed against four PAC foes, topping two of them. Waynesburg fell four spots overall behind Geneva, who placed fifth, and beat out Thiel, who placed 13th. Bethany, the host team, didn’t compete as a team, but instead had individuals competing.

Next, the Yellow Jackets will head to Meadville for the Allegheny Classic, hoping to improve from last season where they finished 8th of 11 schools that competed. Start time for the event will be 10 a.m.